GP reception

[NeoXY]

I posted in chat but got zero responses hence posting here for traffic. This is not an AIBU question but a I am curious to understand how this works question.

Anyone involved with GP reception reading this post? I’m curious. I just spend 1 1/2hour on a call to make an appointment. I started as caller number 10 and was waiting for about half an hour to go from being caller number one to having the phone answered.

I imagine different receptions will have slightly different set ups but how does it work? I can’t see how the person before me was on the phone for half an hour. Also as I was going down from 10 to one it was few of them that took a long time to drop a caller….

I work in a surgery.

If it's a case of receptionist answering phones and also dealing with people coming in to reception for enquiries, then an hour wouldn't be unusual unfortunately.

Also, some callers do take a long time, particularly if they are being triaged even the initial info can be quite complex. I had one only this week I thought I'd help reception and pick up a call in a 10
Minute appointment gap I had, call lasted 40 minutes.

Have you got econsult? That's the way I contact my own surgery on the rare occasions I need anything.

I'm the same @hashbrownsandwich econsult was the best thing to come out of lockdown! I logged a consult yesterday morning while eating my breakfast (before reception was open) and by late morning they'd sent me a text with an appointment for this afternoon. The alternative would have been sitting on hold for hours while in the office!

My surgery introduced e-consult during Lockdown and it was very well received, I thought it was fantastic.

But apparently so did everyone else and so now they’ve stopped it and gone back to phones ‘because they got too many e-consults’ 🤷‍♀️

I love e-consult but it’s constantly “unavailable” now 😕

I work as a hospital receptionist and you would be surprised how long people can stay on the phone for 😬

We also have a 'bypass' number for ambulance and district nurses to use so they don't wait in the queue. So if an ambulance crew are with a patient and they want to speak to the GP they can call and get straight through.

Yes, I normally use the e-consult as well but only if I’m trying to do same day appointment. Never thought of using it for other not the same day appointments, I’ll keep that in mind.

Thanks for the inside knowledge.

Ours has switched from econsult to something called Accurx

It's amazing. Last night I sent a message, today they phoned me up to make an appointment for tomorrow at 8am.

Absolutely flipping wonderful!

I spent about 45 min on the phone recently when my blood (my actual blood) got lost on the 0.3 mile journey to the lab. The receptionist was phoning everywhere she could think of bless her. By the time they found my blood it had clotted and they needed to rebook me jn urgently. So calls like this do happen unfortunately.

I'm a go receptionist
We have to take the phone call can be 20 mins sometimes especially with elderly
Then complex notes and things to action for patient
An hour and half is too long though
Shouldn't be this long

I feel guilty..! Rang for a flu vaccine appt yesterday after getting 2 text invitations, & then had to ask if they'd sent one for any of the kids.. they had (no names in texts) but I swear it was only a couple of minutes!
It was mid morning too, wouldn't dream of phoning at 8am for anything like that..

I'm sorry to break it to you but some calls really do take forever. I don't work in GP reception currently but am in healthcare, and have seen a simple booking call take up to an hour because Elderly Audrey wanted to talk the receptionist's ear off about every tiny detail of the mole she wants removing. Just one of those things unfortunately, especially if NHS, they'll be dealing with lengthy calls plus the people who are physically coming in, usually short staffed, emergencies and consultants can bypass the wait list etc etc.

The same at my surgery. It always gives a date and time when it's supposed to reopen but it usually gets pushed back again. Once in a blue moon it's open. I understand it's probably because they don't have the staff to deal with all the requests but it's frustrating nonetheless.

This made me laugh.

I reckon reception is the modern day version of national service, if everyone had to take a stint it would be a different world!

I work in a gp surgery but not very often on reception. Yes you can get complex calls lasting a long time unfortunately. Also we only have a certain amount of lines coming in so if doctors are all on the phone too taking urgent calls it blocks up the many phone lines.